Emacs on Windows crashes when hitting many keys

Emacs on Windows crashes when hitting many keys

[Deniz Dogan]

I like to frequent an IRC channel which is pretty crazy. Flooding is
common and instead of writing "lol" we like to bash the keys on our
keyboards and sending the results, along the lines of
"ALRDCOEINOEHTINOEHTNIHOENTIHOENTETHIONE".

Weird as that may sound, sometimes when I do this I accidentally hit
Ctrl instead of Shift, resulting in all kinds of crazy key
combinations. This often simply hangs Emacs. Its CPU usage is at 0
percent and memory usage is negligible.

How can I debug this?

-- 
Deniz Dogan

RE: Emacs on Windows crashes when hitting many keys

[Drew Adams]

> How can I debug this?

LOL :-D

Re: Emacs on Windows crashes when hitting many keys

[Chad Brown]

Have you tried connecting to the running process with gdb?

*Chad

Re: Emacs on Windows crashes when hitting many keys

[Lennart Borgman]

On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 9:48 PM, Deniz Dogan <deniz.a.m.dogan@gmail.com> wrote:
> I like to frequent an IRC channel which is pretty crazy. Flooding is
> common and instead of writing "lol" we like to bash the keys on our
> keyboards and sending the results, along the lines of
> "ALRDCOEINOEHTINOEHTNIHOENTIHOENTETHIONE".
>
> Weird as that may sound, sometimes when I do this I accidentally hit
> Ctrl instead of Shift, resulting in all kinds of crazy key
> combinations. This often simply hangs Emacs. Its CPU usage is at 0
> percent and memory usage is negligible.
>
> How can I debug this?

Are you using the standard Emacs for w32? Or are you perhaps using my
patched Emacs+EmacsW32?

I am asking because I had done some changes in this area. I
experienced quite a lot of hangs before I did this, but I am not at
all sure my changes are the correct once. I still get hangs and they
looks like race conditions.

Re: Emacs on Windows crashes when hitting many keys

[Deniz Dogan]

2010/12/21 Lennart Borgman <lennart.borgman@gmail.com>:
> On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 9:48 PM, Deniz Dogan <deniz.a.m.dogan@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I like to frequent an IRC channel which is pretty crazy. Flooding is
>> common and instead of writing "lol" we like to bash the keys on our
>> keyboards and sending the results, along the lines of
>> "ALRDCOEINOEHTINOEHTNIHOENTIHOENTETHIONE".
>>
>> Weird as that may sound, sometimes when I do this I accidentally hit
>> Ctrl instead of Shift, resulting in all kinds of crazy key
>> combinations. This often simply hangs Emacs. Its CPU usage is at 0
>> percent and memory usage is negligible.
>>
>> How can I debug this?
>
> Are you using the standard Emacs for w32? Or are you perhaps using my
> patched Emacs+EmacsW32?
>
> I am asking because I had done some changes in this area. I
> experienced quite a lot of hangs before I did this, but I am not at
> all sure my changes are the correct once. I still get hangs and they
> looks like race conditions.
>

I am using standard Emacs.

-- 
Deniz Dogan

Re: Emacs on Windows crashes when hitting many keys

[Deniz Dogan]

2010/12/21 Chad Brown <yandros@mit.edu>:
> Have you tried connecting to the running process with gdb?
>

I tried it and honestly it would take me some time to get even
remotely acquainted with gdb.

Is it possible to store all key presses in a file somewhere? I'm
thinking something along the lines of "C-h l" but which writes to
disk.

-- 
Deniz Dogan

RE: Emacs on Windows crashes when hitting many keys

[Drew Adams]

> Is it possible to store all key presses in a file somewhere? I'm
> thinking something along the lines of "C-h l" but which writes to
> disk.

C-h f open-dribble-file

Re: Emacs on Windows crashes when hitting many keys

[Chad Brown]

On Dec 21, 2010, at 3:01 PM, Deniz Dogan wrote:
> I tried it and honestly it would take me some time to get even
> remotely acquainted with gdb.

A good first cut:

1.) get the pid of emacs, with something like ``ps waux | grep -i emacs'' at a shell.  We'll call it PID
2.) run gdb
3.) at the gdb prompt '(gdb)', type:
	attach PID
and then wait for gdb to load emacs.
4.) if you get a gdb prompt back, type:
	where
and send us the results. 

It's entirely possible that Drew's suggestion re: dribble-file is more helpful.

Hope this helps,
*Chad